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BY RULING AGAINST NATIONWIDE INJUNCTIONS, SCOTUS AFFIRMS THE IMPERIAL
PRESIDENCY  
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Marjorie Cohn
June 30, 2025
Truthout
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_ SCOTUS stripped federal judges of their authority to protect people
throughout the US when the president breaks the law. _

The Peace Monument is seen in front of the U.S. Capitol dome on June
29, 2025., JIM WATSON / AFP via Getty Images

 

Continuing in their shameful deference to the president, Donald
Trump's lackeys on the Supreme Court once again affirmed the
superiority of the executive over the other two branches of
government. Last year, the high court ruled
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presidents are immune from prosecution when they carry out official
functions. Now, that same court has stripped federal judges of their
authority to protect people throughout the nation when the president
breaks the law.

More than two dozen nationwide ("universal") injunctions blocking
several of Trump's policies were in effect as of mid-May. Those
policies include a more stringent voter ID requirement; a rule
requiring that mail-in ballots be received by Election Day; an effort
to freeze $3 trillion in federal spending to review whether the
disbursement of those funds aligned with administration policies; a
demand that public schools eliminate DEI programs or risk losing some
of the $75 billion in federal funds; and allowing over 25,000 children
to enter deportation proceedings without lawyers.

_Trump v. CASA, Inc._
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to the Supreme Court as a challenge to Trump's January 20 executive
order
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to unilaterally outlaw the constitutional guarantee of birthright
citizenship. But in its June 27 ruling, the high court didn't actually
decide the citizenship issue, which they kicked back to the lower
federal courts.

Instead, in a shocking decision, the Supreme Court held that federal
judges cannot issue universal injunctions for actions that are almost
certainly illegal. "Never before has the Supreme Court imposed such
restrictions on the ability of courts to provide relief against
unconstitutional acts," Berkeley Law School Dean Erwin
Chemerinsky wrote
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the _Los Angeles Times._

The Supreme Court granted the request by the Trump administration to
partially pause three federal court rulings that had blocked Trump's
executive order. Those courts had determined that only nationwide
injunctions would provide the plaintiffs with complete relief because
people constantly move in and out of states, and children born to
noncitizen parents in a non-plaintiff state may later reside in a
plaintiff state, and vice versa.

Trump will likely continue to be barred from enforcing his order
against the pregnant plaintiffs who challenged it. But the decision
could affect any case in which a federal judge makes a ruling that
encompasses people beyond the individuals who actually filed the
lawsuit. The Supreme Court left open the question of whether courts
could block government actions nationwide when there is no narrower
judicial approach possible.

TRUMP'S EXECUTIVE ORDER PURPORTS TO END BIRTHRIGHT CITIZENSHIP

Section 1 of the 14th Amendment
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the U.S. Constitution — known as the "Citizenship Clause" — reads,
"All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to
the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the
State wherein they reside." Congress codified the Citizenship Clause
in the Nationality Act of 1940
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In the 1898 landmark decision of _United States v. Wong Kim Ark_
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Court held that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to virtually
all individuals born in the U.S. with exceptions for children of
foreign diplomats or enemy occupiers. Although _Wong Kim
Ark_ included children in Indigenous tribes as an additional
exception, Congress explicitly granted citizenship to them in
the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act
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Trump's executive order
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that, beginning on February 19, 2025, children born in the U.S. will
no longer be treated as citizens if their mothers were not in the U.S.
lawfully and their fathers were not U.S. citizens or lawful permanent
residents. It also denies citizenship to children whose mothers were
legally in the country on a temporary basis (such as under the Visa
Waiver Program, or with a student, tourist, or work visa) and whose
fathers were neither citizens nor lawful permanent residents.

The order would deny
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255,000 children nationwide their birthright to citizenship each year.
It would also effectively cut federal funding
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foster care services for neglected and abused children, as well as
early interventions for infants, toddlers, and students who have
disabilities.

On January 21, 22 states sued
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and some of his department officials in a U.S. district court in
Massachusetts. The plaintiffs requested a declaration that Trump's
order violates the 14th Amendment to the Constitution and U.S. laws,
and they sought an injunction preventing its enforcement.

Similar lawsuits were filed in the states of Washington and New
Hampshire. In all three cases, federal district judges granted
injunctions and blocked the operation of Trump's order nationwide
while the legal issue worked its way through the courts. U.S. District
Court Judge John C. Coughenour in the Western District of
Washington called
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executive order "blatantly unconstitutional." The First, Fourth, and
Ninth Circuit Courts of Appeals affirmed the district courts'
injunctions.

Thirty days after the Supreme Court's ruling, Trump's executive order
could go into effect for people in the 28 states that haven't
challenged it in court, unless those individual parents hire their own
lawyers to mount their own legal challenges.

"THE GOVERNMENT IS LIKELY TO SUFFER IRREPARABLE HARM"

In a 6-3 ruling, the radical right-wing majority of the Supreme Court
overturned the injunctions. They didn't rule on whether Trump's
executive order was constitutional. Instead, they held that federal
judges cannot prevent him from implementing it on a nationwide basis.

Amy Coney Barrett, writing for herself, Chief Justice John Roberts,
Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh,
admitted, "No one disputes that the Executive has a duty to follow the
law." Nevertheless, the majority held, "Nothing like a universal
injunction was available at the founding, or for that matter, for more
than a century thereafter. Thus, under the Judiciary Act, federal
courts lack authority to issue them."

The majority said that "the Government is likely to suffer irreparable
harm from the District Courts' entry of injunctions that likely exceed
the authority conferred by the Judiciary Act."

Barrett admitted that a "patchwork injunction" would "prove
unworkable" because "hildren often move across state lines or are born
outside their parents' State of residence." But the majority left it
to lower courts to decide whether a "narrower" freeze would be
"appropriate."

The Supreme Court's ruling anticipated proceedings in the lower courts
about how much the injunctions should be narrowed for the plaintiffs.
The majority suggested class-action lawsuits to challenge Trump's
order on behalf of groups of affected plaintiffs who were not parties
to the three pending cases.

"NO RIGHT IS SAFE IN THE NEW LEGAL REGIME THE COURT CREATES"

Responding to the new condition for citizenship Trump created in his
executive order, Sonia Sotomayor wrote in her powerful dissent, in
which she was joined by Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan:
"Besides birth, there is only one condition: that one be 'subject to
the jurisdiction' of the United States. Yet that condition too leaves
no room for ambiguity. To be 'subject to the jurisdiction' of the
United States means simply to be bound to its authority and its laws."

Sotomayor charged that "this Court endorses the radical proposition
that the President is harmed, irreparably, whenever he cannot do
something he wants to do, even if what he wants to do is break the
law."

The government "falls well short of satisfying its burden to show that
it will likely suffer irreparable harm absent a stay and that it will
likely succeed on the merits of its challenge to the scope of the
injunctions," the dissent says. In fact, the notion that the executive
branch would be "irreparably harmed by injunctions that direct it to
continue following settled law," Sotomayor wrote, "strains credulity."

Indeed, it is pregnant people whose children would lose the benefits
of citizenship under Trump's order who would suffer irreparable harm.
The majority, Sotomayor wrote, "does not contend otherwise."

Sotomayor also noted that the government didn't ask the Supreme Court
to rule that Trump's executive order is constitutional, which would be
"an impossible task in light of the Constitution's text, history, this
Court's precedents, federal law, and Executive Branch practice."

Instead, Sotomayor wrote, the government "tries its hand at a
different game. It asks this Court to hold that, no matter how illegal
a law or policy, courts can never simply tell the Executive to stop
enforcing it against anyone. ... This Court's precedent establishes
beyond a shade of doubt that the Executive Order is unconstitutional."

Sotomayor notes that the majority didn't identify a single case from
the founding era to the present in which the Supreme Court held that
federal courts can never issue "universal injunctions or broad
equitable relief that extends to nonparties."

"No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,"
according to the dissent. "Today, the threat is to birthright
citizenship. Tomorrow, a different administration may try to seize
firearms from law-abiding citizens or prevent people of certain faiths
from gathering to worship."

THE RULING IS AN "EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO THE RULE OF LAW"

Trump's effort to abolish universal injunctions "is, at bottom, a
request for this Court's permission to engage in unlawful behavior,"
Jackson wrote in her separate dissent. She calls the majority's
decision "an existential threat to the rule of law," adding, "With
deep disillusionment, I dissent."

The consequence of the Supreme Court's ruling is that only children
born in the U.S. to noncitizen parents who have filed separate
lawsuits stand a chance of enjoying their constitutional right to
birthright citizenship, she noted.

Jackson said that economic status will determine whether individuals
can vindicate their constitutional rights going forward. "The wealthy
and the well connected will have little difficulty securing legal
representation, going to court, and obtaining injunctive relief in
their own name if the Executive violates their rights," she wrote. But
"the zone of lawlessness the majority has now authorized will
disproportionately impact the poor, the uneducated, and the unpopular
— i.e., those who may not have the wherewithal to lawyer up, and
will all too often find themselves beholden to the Executive's whims."

THE COURT'S RULING WILL LEAD TO A "SCATTERSHOT SYSTEM"

In his concurrence, Kavanaugh admits that "the regular movement of the
American people into and out of different States and regions, would
make it difficult to sensibly maintain such a scattershot system of
federal law."

More than 300 lawsuits have been filed to block Trump's executive
orders since the beginning of his second term. Federal judges
have halted or limited
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of his actions. But the high court has allowed several of them to
continue while the legal issues they raise are pending.

Now separate lawsuits would have to be filed in all 94 federal
districts in order to challenge the constitutionality of executive
orders or federal laws.

CLASS-ACTION LAWSUITS

The Supreme Court suggests that people can file class-action lawsuits
in lieu of seeking universal injunctions. Class actions allow groups
or individual plaintiffs to bring a lawsuit on behalf of a larger
class of individuals who have been victims of similar government
policies.

Kavanaugh cited the possibility of "statewide, regionwide or even
nationwide" class action relief. But in order to be certified as a
class, plaintiffs must satisfy several statutory hurdles.

After the Supreme Court's ruling, the plaintiffs in two of the three
lawsuits at issue in this case filed new class-action suits to
temporarily block Trump's order from applying to members of the
"putative class" of people who would be impacted by it. Both suits
alleged that the order violates the 14th Amendment and the Nationality
Act of 1940.

Casa, Inc.; Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project, Inc.; and expectant and
recent mothers filed
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Maryland for a class action. Plaintiffs proposed a class definition
of: "All children who have been born or will be born in the United
States on or after February 19, 2025, who are designated by Executive
Order 14,160 to be ineligible for birthright citizenship, and their
parents."

As the plaintiffs wrote:

Absent citizenship, children born to noncitizens, including the
children of Plaintiffs, Members, and members of the putative class,
may be subject to deportation. These children may therefore be forced
to leave the country of their birth to travel to a place where they
have never been, where they may have no family or legal ties, and, in
the worst cases, where they may face torture, persecution, and death.

In the other case, the national ACLU, ACLU of New Hampshire, ACLU of
Maine, ACLU of Massachusetts, Legal Defense Fund, Asian Law Caucus,
and Democracy Defenders Fund filed
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class-action lawsuit in New Hampshire on behalf of a proposed class of
babies subject to Trump's order, as well as their parents. Their
proposed class includes:

All current and future persons who are born on or after February 20,
2025, where (1) that person's mother was unlawfully present in the
United States and the person's father was not a United States citizen
or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person's birth, or
(2) that person's mother's presence in the United States was lawful
but temporary, and the person's father was not a United States citizen
or lawful permanent resident at the time of said person's birth, as
well as the parents (including expectant parents) of those persons.

Both lawsuits cited facts showing that they met the numerous
requirements for class certification, which are set forth in Federal
Rules of Civil Procedure 23(a), 23(b)(2), and 23(g)
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Even if the class is certified and the plaintiffs prevail, other class
members would not automatically benefit the way they would after a
nationwide injunction. They would still have to hire a lawyer and
prove to the court that they are entitled to relief as a class member.

Project 2025
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a blueprint for Trump's autocratic state and he has moved quickly and
decisively to implement it. The Supreme Court granted presidents
immunity from prosecution for official acts. And the high court has
now ruled that federal courts are powerless to stop executive branch
lawbreaking on a nationwide basis.

But the resistance will continue to grow as the repression increases.
Between 4 and 6 million people participated in the June 14 "No Kings"
protests. People are resisting – not only in the courts, but in the
media, in Congress, and in the streets.

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_This article first appeared on Truthout
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_This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
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* Trump vs CASA
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* Inc.; US Citizenship; Sotomayor; Injunctions; Presidential Power;
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